Nicole Lai

Nicole Lai has several years of drug discovery experience at Kallyope (a biotech based in New York City focused on alleviating diseases affecting the gut-brain axis). At Kallyope, Nicole led a Food Allergy program from target identification/validation to lead optimization and biomarker development. She also collaborated with FASI’s Scientific Founder, Ruslan Medzhitov, in assessing target efficacy and mechanisms of action in murine food allergy models.​

Nicole completed her PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences from Isaac Chiu’s lab (a FASI investigator) at Harvard Medical School, where she investigated how sensory neurons modulate gastrointestinal inflammation, gut physiology, and host defense in murine enteric infection models.

Nicole is keen to harness our growing understanding of how the nervous and immune systems interact — knowledge gained from FASI investigators and the field — to develop novel therapeutics for food allergy.